History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [207]
religion. Pagan virtue is 'prostituted with the influence of obscene and filthy devils'. What would be virtues in a Christian are vices in a pagan. 'Those things which she [the soul] seems to account virtues, and thereby to sway her affections, if they be not all referred unto God, are indeed vices rather than virtues.' They that are not of this society (the Church) shall suffer eternal misery. 'In our conflicts here on earth, either the pain is victor, and so death expels the sense of it, or nature conquers, and expels the pain. But there, pain shall afflict eternally, and nature shall suffer eternally, both enduring to the continuance of the inflicted punishment.'
There are two resurrections, that of the soul at death, and that of the body at the Last Judgment. After a discussion of various difficulties concerning the millennium, and the subsequent doings of Gog and Magog, he comes to a text in II Thessalonians (ii, 11, 12): 'God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.' Some people might think it unjust that the Omnipotent should first deceive them, and then punish them for being deceived; but to St Augustine this seems quite in order. 'Being condemned, they are seduced, and, being seduced, condemned. But their seducement is by the secret judgment of God, justly secret, and secretly just; even His that hath judged continually, ever since the world began.' St Augustine holds that God divided mankind into the elect and the reprobate, not because of their merits or demerits, but arbitrarily. All alike deserve damnation, and therefore the reprobate have no ground of complaint. From the above passage of St Paul, it appears that they are wicked because they are reprobate, not reprobate because they are wicked.
After the resurrection of the body, the bodies of the damned will burn eternally without being consumed. In this there is nothing strange; it happens to the salamander and Mount Etna. Devils, though incorporeal, can be burnt by corporeal fire. Hell's torments are not purifying, and will not be lessened by the intercessions of saints. Origen erred in thinking hell not eternal. Heretics, and sinful Catholics, will be damned.
The book ends with a description of the Saints' vision of God in heaven, and of the eternal felicity of the City of God.
From the above summary, the importance of the work may not be clear. What was influential was the separation of Church and State, with the clear implication that the State could only be part of the City of God by being submissive towards the Church in all religious matters. This has been the doctrine of the Church ever since. All through the Middle Ages, during the gradual rise of the papal power, and throughout the conflict between Pope and Emperor, St Augustine supplied the Western Church with the theoretical justification of its policy. The Jewish State, in the legendary time of the judges, and in the historical period after the return from the Babylonian captivity, had been a theocracy; the Christian State should imitate it in this respect. The weakness of the emperors, and of most Western medieval monarchs, enabled the Church, to a great extent, to realize the ideal of the City of God. In the East, where the emperor was strong, this development never took place, and the Church remained much more subject to the State than it became in the West.
The Reformation, which revived St Augustine's doctrine of salvation, threw over his theocratic teaching, and became Erastian,13 largely owing to the practical exigencies of the fight with Catholicism. But Protestant Erastianism was half-hearted, and the most religious among Protestants were still influenced by St Augustine. Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, and Quakers took over a part of his doctrine, but laid less stress on the Church. He held to predestination, and also